More than $750,000 in cash in head shop owner’s home

Authorities seizing assets of a convicted Duluth head shop owner hit a jackpot in the bathroom.
Law enforcement agents found $767,346 in currency, most of it wrapped in plastic and “hidden in a small space concealed behind what appeared to be a cabinet in the lower level bathroom” in the home of Last Place On Earth owner Jim Carlson, according to federal court papers filed Monday.

They found $5,000 in a “Buddha-type decorative item” on a living room shelf, $6,500 in a dining room hutch and $302 tucked between the master bed mattress and bedrail, the filing said.

Federal prosecutors are seeking to recover profits from Carlson, who was convicted in October of misbranding and selling illegal synthetic drugs and laundering the money. He is in jail awaiting sentencing. His girlfriend Lava Haugen, also convicted in the case, still lives at the house that agents searched in Superior, Wis. on December 18.

An Internal Revenue Service agent calculated that Last Place on Earth generated $6.5 million in proceeds from selling the illegal substances.